Thursday, July 30, 2009

illicit plastic pony


Almost certainly, this would have been a better shot if I'd had a second, or third, attempt at it - I knew/suspected this wasn't quite in focus (it's not the easiest thing in the world, using a 18-200 lens to shoot the contents of small plastic balls inside a plastic dispensing machine in a badly, but fluorescently lit store.   But as I stepped back for a new attempt...

Officious large female supervisor in Eldorado supermarket:  Excuse me?   What are you taking photographs of?

Me: Er... the balls in this machine.

OLFS: You're... why?

Me: I like taking pictures of plastic ponies in strange places [readers of this blog will know that to be true.   And it was, therefore, an honest reply.   However...]

OLFS: Really?

Me: Yes...honestly...I'm not taking pictures of the rest of the supermarket, or anything...

OLFS: Show me.

So I showed her... and since there was just the one picture, and the previous one was of a sign in Mayan lettering in the village of Corrales, she seemed grudgingly satisfied.

This was not an encouraging encounter, and I slunk off.   My initial theory was that they are employing either undocumented workers or ones on whom they aren't paying tax of some kind.   Alice thinks that the supervisor must have decided that I was checking out what they're up to (displaying many different kinds of Mexican altar candle? running a rather greasy looking olive bar?  selling a rather good - I bought one - type of humming bird feeder) on behalf of some (imagined) competitor.   On reflection, I suspect she was just bored, and someone wielding a large Nikon was the most interesting thing to have happened there that afternoon - but I won't be taking any more views of Eldorado supermarket for a while, even if I have, just about, got another image for the plastic pony archives.

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